On the one year anniver­sary of launch­ing the Get­ty Images and Lean In Col­lec­tion, it’s a great time to reflect on why this visu­al col­lec­tion of a mod­ern, more empow­ered woman was so suc­cess­ful. As brands strug­gle to find their sto­ry, this col­lec­tion illus­trates ways every brand can approach con­tent, con­tent cura­tion, trends, audi­ence research, and sto­ry­telling to reach their cus­tomers.

What Is The Lean In Collection?

Get­ty Images and LeanIn col­lab­o­rat­ed to cre­ate a library of images that depict­ed pow­er­ful women, girls, and those who sup­port them and their quest to lead. Their goal of visu­al­iz­ing female lead­er­ship in work and in life has been wild­ly suc­cess­ful.

The Lean In col­lec­tion has been licensed in more than 65 coun­tries, sales have dou­bled, and the col­lec­tion has grown from 2,500 images to near­ly 5,000.

Here are four things brands can learn from the con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy used by the Get­ty Images Lean In Col­lec­tion.

1. Leverage Curation

When the col­lec­tion launched, near­ly 60 per­cent of the images curat­ed for this pop­u­lar col­lec­tion already exist­ed in the Get­ty Images archives. It’s not that the empow­er­ing images did­n’t exist, it’s that they need­ed to be curat­ed in a way that could tell a more accu­rate sto­ry.

Cura­tion is a pow­er­ful sto­ry­telling mech­a­nism. Doing a con­tent audit to first estab­lish what you have can help you iden­ti­fy trends, inside and out­side of your brand, to tell a more impor­tant sto­ry.

2. Focus on Trends

Pamela Gross­man, direc­tor of visu­al trends for Get­ty Images, has an uncan­ny knack for under­stand­ing the sur­fac­ing of trends and get­ting ahead of it to help her team pro­vide the imagery that sup­ports cur­rent think­ing and ideas.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion between Get­ty Images and LeanIn.org was­n’t hap­pen­stance, it was forged by the cre­ative team (which employ a psy­chol­o­gist) to help under­stand the desires and emo­tions dri­ving peo­ple as they work, play and make sense of their world. Focus­ing on this trend, the under­stand­ing that women are 50 per­cent of the work­force but take only 14 per­cent of lead­er­ship posi­tion, allowed the Lean In orga­ni­za­tion to craft a sto­ry with visu­als that told a nar­ra­tive many peo­ple felt was­n’t get­ting told.

3. Know Your Audience

Get­ty Images audi­ence is var­ied, but a core tar­get seg­ment is brand man­agers. Brand man­agers can’t afford to get it wrong. Just ask Urban Out­fit­ters, which tried to reach their col­lege-age audi­ence by sell­ing a blood-spat­tered Kent State Uni­ver­si­ty sweat­shirt that marked the 1970 deaths of four stu­dents who died in protest of the war. Their “vin­tage” col­lec­tion was care­less, thought­less, and received a great deal of back­lash.

This Get­ty Images col­lec­tion helped brand man­agers and cre­atives find the images they need to depict the real­i­ty of being a pro­fes­sion­al, a woman, a moth­er and all the jobs and duties asso­ci­at­ed with that role if they want to con­nect with their audi­ences.

4. Be Inspiring

Sheryl Sand­berg’s book, “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” is less a man­u­script on lev­el­ing the play­ing field for women and more of a move­ment. The web­site, LeanIn.org, and the sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion includ­ing Lean In Sto­ries and direc­tions for run­ning Lean In Cir­cles don’t just tell but show how women and men are advanc­ing the desire for equal­i­ty.

Cre­at­ing con­tent for the pur­pose of cre­at­ing con­tent is a waste of time. Unless your con­tent inspires and moves peo­ple to dis­cus­sion and action it is worth­less. Read­ers and cus­tomers are bom­bard­ed by more than 16,000 visu­al images/messages every day. Your cus­tomers are over­whelmed by data, sto­ries, and imagery.

This col­lab­o­ra­tive com­mer­cial effort also has a cause mar­ket­ing ele­ment, a por­tion of the pro­ceeds from the Lean In Col­lec­tion goes toward the cre­ation of Get­ty Images grants for images show­cas­ing female empow­er­ment and to sup­port­ing the Lean In mis­sion.

The suc­cess of the Get­ty Images Lean In Col­lec­tion is due in part to the fact that it inspired gen­er­a­tions of women and men to rethink how they see women. A cou­ple of years ago a Google search for “pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness woman” would have returned images of young, sexy women car­ry­ing brief­cas­es. Now the same search returns more real­is­tic imagery of real women in dif­fer­ent pro­fes­sions, of dif­fer­ent ages, in dif­fer­ent styles of cloth­ing, in dif­fer­ent roles which more accu­rate­ly depict the role and real­i­ty of a woman.

The biggest way these brands col­lab­o­rat­ed to inspire? They told the truth.

Takeaways

• Exam­ine the con­tent you already have. Cura­tion is a pow­er­ful form of sto­ry­telling.
• Under­stand trends. What are your cus­tomers talk­ing about? What keeps them up at night? Unless you’re shar­ing real solu­tions to real prob­lems and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the con­ver­sa­tion your sto­ry will just be noise.
• Your sto­ry­telling can’t begin until you under­stand your audi­ence. Don’t try to boil the ocean, it’s not nec­es­sary to reach every­one. Focus intent­ly on your tar­get mar­ket and what they care about if you want to con­nect.
• Lead the con­ver­sa­tion. As a brand you can’t just par­tic­i­pate in the con­ver­sa­tion. Be inno­v­a­tive and inspir­ing, then get out of the way and let your cus­tomers par­tic­i­pate in the sto­ry­telling. Tell the truths that are dif­fi­cult to share and let the sto­ry unfold with the help of your best cus­tomers.